Pope Benedict XVI: Enemy of Jihad

In
choosing Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to succeed Pope John Paul II as Pope
Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church has cast a vote for the survival of

Europe and the West. “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century,”
historian Bernard Lewis predicted not long ago; however, judging from the
writings of the new Pope, he is not likely to be sanguine about this
transition. For one thing, the new Pope seems to be aware of the grave
danger Europeans face: he has called upon Europe to recover its Christian roots
“if it truly wants to survive.”

For
while his predecessor kissed the Qur’an and pursued a consistent line of
conciliation toward the Islamic world, despite numerous provocations and
attacks against Catholics in Muslim countries, the new Pope Benedict XVI,
while no less charitable, has been a bit more forthcoming about the
reality of how Islam challenges the Catholic Church, Christianity, and
even the post-Christian West. He has spoken up for the rights of converts
from Islam to Christianity, who live under a death sentence in Islamic
countries and increasingly live in fear even in the West. He has even
spoken approvingly of Christians proselytizing Muslims — a practice that
enrages Muslims and is against the law in many Islamic countries.

The
new Pope has criticized Europe’s reluctance to acknowledge its Christian
roots for fear of offending Islam’s rapidly growing and increasingly
influential presence in European countries — a presence which, as
historian Bat Ye’or demonstrates in her book Eurabia,
has been actively encouraged and facilitated by European leaders for over
three decades. “What offends Islam,” said Cardinal Ratzinger, “is
the lack of reference to God, the arrogance of reason, which provokes
fundamentalism.” He has criticized multiculturalism, “which is so
constantly and passionately encouraged and supported,” because it
“sometimes amounts to an abandonment and disavowal of what is our
own.”

He
contrasts the modern-day resurgence of Islam with the enervation of Europe. In old Europe, he has said, “we
are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize
anything as definitive and has as its highest value one’s own ego and
one's own desires.” Islam, on the other hand, is anything but
relativistic: “The rebirth of Islam is due in
part to the new material richness acquired by Muslim countries, but mainly
to the knowledge that it is able to offer a valid spiritual foundation for
the life of its people, a foundation that seems to have escaped from the
hands of old Europe.”

In
line with his call to Europeans to recover their own spiritual heritage,
the new Pope opposes Turkey’s proposed entrance into the European Union: “Turkey,” he has declared, “has
always represented a different continent, always in contrast with Europe.” But his objection is not
simply geographical — in fact, he opposes the geographical
oversimplifications that underlie Turkey’s EU bid: “Europe,” he has explained, “was founded not on a
geography, but on a common faith. We have to redefine what Europe is, and we cannot stop at positivism.” A Europe newly defined as in some sense a Christian entity may
outrage secularists, but a secular and relativist Europe has so far proved powerless against the Islamization
of Europe — despite the fact that that Islamization threatens cherished
Western notions of the equality of rights and dignity of all people.

Europe, the new Pope has written,
“appears to be at the start of its decline and fall.”

It
may be too late, as Bat Ye’or believes, to arrest that decline and fall.
However, the first thing a physician does when he treats a disease is
identify the problem. No healing can proceed from a misdiagnosis. It is
heartening to see that Pope Benedict XVI has already, in various speeches
and writings before his accession to the papacy, dared to speak more
clearly about the threat that Islam poses to Western civilization than his
predecessor — for all his many and remarkable gifts —
ever quite managed to do.

Late
in 2003 the semi-official Jesuit magazine La
Civiltà Cattolica departed from John Paul II’s policy toward Islam
and published a scathing
criticism of the mistreatment that Christians suffer in Islamic
societies. It represented the first indication that any Catholic officials
recognized the dimensions of the religious conflict that jihadists are
waging against Christians and others around the world. La
Civiltà Cattolica pointed out that “for almost a thousand years Europe was under constant
threat from Islam, which twice put its survival in serious danger.” Now,
through jihad terrorism and demographics Islam is threatening Europe’s survival yet again
— and it looks as if now there is a Pope who has noticed. Maybe in Europe the resistance is just
beginning.